With just 4:58 left in the fourth quarter the game had come down to one play. A third and goal from the seven yard line. Oklahoma was leading 37-34.
Score a touchdown and the Sooners would likely put this slugfest of a game over. End this drive with a field goal would put Oklahoma up by just six — an uncomfortable place, given the rapidity with which the Baylor Bears had scored.
I texted friends: “This is a game winning or game losing play right here.”
Baker Mayfield, who had been brilliant all night and exceptionally lucky all night (two fumbles providently bounced back in his hands to save disaster), dropped back to pass. He was looking for Sterling Shephard running a corner route. Covered. Mark Andrews was running another route. Covered. Mayfield started to run for it — but no, the opening closed. The Baylor pass rush was closing in. And Mayfield scrambled.
It looked like one of those run-a-thousand-yards scrambles that would end in an incomplete pass, or a sack or something worse.
Then fullback Dimitri Flowers — who had been blocking in pass protection — didn’t have anyone to block as the Bear defenders were “bearing” down on Mayfield. Flowers slipped into the end zone and started waiving his hands.
And Mayfield, who somehow managed to scan the field, slip away from a mass of Baylor defensive linemen and extend the play oh those precious few more seconds, threw Flowers the ball in the end zone. Touchdown Oklahoma.
And Mayfield, who somehow managed to scan the field, slip away from a mass of Baylor defensive linemen and extend the play oh those precious few more seconds, threw Flowers the ball in the end zone. Touchdown Oklahoma.
And Mayfield, who somehow managed to scan the field, slip away from a mass of Baylor defensive linemen and extend the play oh those precious few more seconds, threw Flowers the ball in the end zone. Touchdown Oklahoma.
Touchdown by a player who wasn’t even supposed to be a receiver on that play.
Touchdown pass by a quarterback who walked on this team a year ago and who walked into the Heisman talk this weekend.
“I’m just out there playing backyard football at that point and that’s something I take pride in,” Mayfield would say later.
Remember 2000? It was also a road game in the state of Texas. Some guy named Josh Heupel was quartebacking the Sooners against Texas A&M. On a similar play he was scrambling out of the pocket. Everyone was covered.
Then a receiver breaks from his route and Josh found him in that south endzone. It was also a backyard sandlot broken play. The Sooners national championship hopes were saved, elevated, made, whatever.
With 4:58 left in Waco, it was that same kind of play. And the same kind of heady quarterback.
Heupel didn’t win a Heisman. But he won a national championship.
Baker Mayfield set foot on a path to one or the other on a rainy Saturday night down the road on I-35 in Texas.
— Mike
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